In complex business intelligence systems, it is common to produce charts to assist in interpreting data.
Web-based enterprise reporting solutions can be designed to address a full range of reports, including production reports such as invoices and statements, statutory reports, and business and analytical reports. Currently companies often use different reporting tools for different applications. However, in rendering result sets, the user is all too often presented with a chart that contains illegible information, such as having columns that are so narrow that their colour is not distinguishable, or having so many lines that it is impractical to follow a particular series. For instance, if a chart has 1000 categories and 1000 legend entries, rendering all this data in one chart would produce a chart that is almost impossible to read.
Previous attempts to improve the situation have required the user to make a number of choices and selections—participating in the design of the graphical form of the results. The results have not always been satisfactory. The 80-20 suppression algorithm used in various business intelligence products is an example of such attempts. To illustrate this algorithm and its limitations, consider a column chart that would ordinarily show 1000 columns. With 80-20 suppression, the tallest columns whose values comprise 80% of the total are shown and the remaining 20% are amalgamated into one column and shown as “Other”. For example, the top 11 categories that comprise 81% of the total are shown in 11 distinct columns, and the 989 categories that comprise the remaining 19% are shown as the “Other” column. Selecting this “Other” column and exploring its details (i.e. “drilling down”) causes the existing chart to be replaced with another column chart. In this detailed column chart, the 80-20 suppression rule also applies such that the largest of the remaining 989 categories are shown and the remainder amalgamated into a further “Other” column.
This algorithm works well until a large number of the categories to be shown in the chart are the same or similar size. In such cases, it may take hundreds of categories to comprise 80% of the chart, all of which will be shown in a column chart as many distinct, very thin columns; in fact, the largest column in such a chart might well be the “Other” column.
There are many forms of graphical display possible, and each has its use. The selection of the most effective vehicle to illustrate particular business information or a trend is also of interest.
Earlier attempts at solving this problem have included adopting strategies such as:                Rendering the data in the form of a large chart that is directly navigated by panning and zooming.        Rendering several charts based upon one or more control breaks as exemplified in FIG. 7.        Shrinking the image to fit within rendering region.        
These all have one or more disadvantages or shortcomings.